wrote:
This is the first year of a successful juneberry harvest in that I
canned at least 75% of the crop. In past years
one hot day in summer would soften the berries and no longer
worthwhile.

And this is the first year here in South Dakota not racked by a summer
drought, although it is becoming
dry now and where I would have to waste a month in just watering.

Well it has been 3 weeks without rainfall so in the past week I have
dropped
everything to start watering. Hopefully tonight, tomorrow and Friday
we have
some rain. If so, then this will be the best summer here ever in that
I was
turned into a waterboy for only 1 week. Last years, I spent entire
months doing
nothing but watering.

Well the sour cherry harvest is over with and managed to cann about
100 quarts,
(100 liters) of sour cherries (some mixed fruits with the cherries).

The Juneberries are long past gone.

That leaves only currants, some gooseberries and buffaloberries.

Now the gooseberries that I buy in the Oregon brand canned fruit are
delicious and was
expecting my fresh fruit to be as good or better. But to my surprize,
my gooseberries have
disappointed me. Their skin is flavorful, but it seems as though their
insides are powdery dry.
Seems as though the skin is the only tasteful part of fresh
gooseberries. Perhaps it is the
variety I have, or perhaps dry climates take a toll on gooseberries.

As for buffaloberries, they are somewhat new to me. They seem to pack
the highest amount
of flavour per size of any fruit I have ever tasted. They are tiny but
feel like I am biting into a
whole lemon. They have a lemony flavour. I do not know if they have
any superlatives-- perhaps
the highest concentration of vitamin C per volume?

But one thing I want to find out if buffaloberries carry any sort of
mild poison, as that chokecherries
contain some poison in their seeds. And the reason I stopped bothering
with chokecherries. I will eat
chokecherries fresh and raw and spit out the seed, but unwilling to
cann or make juice because of this
poison content inside their seeds.

So for the next weeks, I have only currants and buffaloberries to
cann.

Now I am waiting for grapes, apples, pears to ripen for the next
bigtime canning. Grapes are fun to
can for they are little to prep. With apples I usually make cinnamon
applesauce so that the blender is
hauled out and have to use and clean in the operation.

Now this year, the horse and llama are going to compete with me for
the apples, and noticing the
horse already starting to pluck off the trees the low lying apples,
even green apples. They must
like apples so much that they eat green as well as ripe. I do not mind
the horse so long as he
does not damage the apple trees.

Now I am going to have to admit defeat on apricots. When I first moved
here in 2000 I planted many
rows of apricot trees and they have grown very well. This is the first
year in which they have plenty
of apricots on the tree without loss to a late Spring frost. Trouble
is that the apricots never seem to
grow to mature fruit and where most seem to shrivel and die on the
branches. So the climate here
is just too inhospitable for apricots.

But the big harvest this year for me is going to be black walnuts.
This year I should have bushel baskets
and bushel baskest full of black walnuts to harvest, at least
competing with the squirrels.

If I were young again with living in this region and wanting a cash
crop to grow on a large piece of farmland
I would slowly turn it into a black-walnut farm, with rows and rows of
black-walnuts, harvest the crop and
sell it. I can also harvest the wood and sell it. The best thing is
that the land has almost no erosion
of top soil and where I can operate without ever using a motorized
vehicle such as a tractor. That is
if I were young again.

These three lessons, would have served me, if I were young again. (1)
find a crop that saves the topsoil
(2) find a crop that is a plant native to the region, don't do exotica
plants (3) make yearly improvements
on water supply.

I see the local farmers in the area, many of them getting those large
wheeled sprinklers. And good on
them, because the last summers without rain are nightmare summers.
When I see plants wilting, I
do not know who suffers more, the plant or me.


Archimedes Plutonium
www.iw.net/~a_plutonium
whole entire Universe is just one big atom
where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies